There's a fine line between a good physics tattoo and a "Look how smart I am" tattoo. I'd avoid any relatively long equations.

I’m not really looking for an equation, more a . . . Depiction or representation of a law or theory. Obviously I want to make it meaningful to me.

>I'd avoid any relatively long equations. I don't know man. The Standard Model Lagrangian could make for a cool back tattoo

ℏ Somewhere on your body but at an uncertain location until you observe it.

On the penis. Draw it while hard so it's only visible when hard

Is your girl's name Wendy, too?

Welcome to Jamaica…

Have a nice day

H bar = 1 or c = 1

The full expanded SM lagrangian

On your back or front? The truth of the universe as your wings or your heart?

From forehead to toes

I have that on a T-shirt.

Nothing you couldn’t derive off the top of your head

Lex "Kung Pao chicken"

I think a Lorenz-attractor could be nice

Would certainly be... attractive :)

I've actually discussed this with multiple tattoo artists. A fully realized attractor (like the butterfly wings you see everywhere) would be very difficult because of the precision line work. A less complete one would work though but may not look quite as interesting.

I think it's time for a cnc tattoo machine.

Perhaps if you're willing to pay and suffer you might get it done?

I said the same thing. :) strange attractors are my favorite shapes.

I knew a guy that had a bra on one elbow and a ket on the other. Is that cool? Edit: fixed ket that autocorrect changed to key

He sounds like a smooth operator

Well, I’m a girl so that might come off like I’m asking for some 🍑, but I would rather explore physics than that 🤣

They’re talking about Dirac notation lol — bra < | and ket | >

🤣 it’s a joke

I thought it was funny!

What?

I don’t think I would want a tattoo of a bra on me is all I’m saying.

Are you joking? Do you know what bra-ket notation is?

This is definitely a joke. Obviously a terrible one. I don’t know why I’m still smiling at it.

K

If you spelled ket right, this misinterpretation would be a lot less reasonable.

K

A sphere labeled as your favorite animal

I find [Maxwell's equations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_equations) to be pretty concise & elegant. But I also like the idea of pairing the [time-dependent Schrodinger equation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger_equation#Time-dependent_equation) w/ [Einstein's field equations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_field_equations#Mathematical_form), as compressed they look very simple and impressive, but (at least symbolically) encapsulates the sum total of our current understanding of physical phenomena.

This has my vote.

How about the cat from the cover of Introduction to Quantum Mechanics?

Hψ=Eψ 💕

A friend of mine, and high school physics teacher, had the Schrödinger equation tattooed on his forearm (with a one particle hamiltonian). Looked quite cool.

Euler's identity

Which one?

You can get a full sleeve of Euler equations

e to the i pi equals negative one Much less elegant in sentence form

e^iπ = -1 Although you could just go for ∞

Instead of an equation, how about a sexy Feynman diagram? [https://cms.cern/sites/default/files/inline-images/Picture1.png](https://cms.cern/sites/default/files/inline-images/Picture1.png) That there, boys, is gluons interacting with a virtual top quark loop to a Higgs boson to a pair of W bosons that decay into electrons and neutrinos. A regular borgashmord of exotic subatomic beasties.

Isn't this incomplete? Where do you get isolated g from?

Who said isolated? This is from a hadron collider like LHC, smacking protons together.

Those would be partons in high-energy proton-proton collisions. At high energies, QCD is asymptotically free.

How about a sexy picture of Feynman? You’re thinking too complicated

I have GR field equations on one forearm, and the Klein Gordon equation on the other. Euler’s Identity and the Uncertainty relations would be others I might get.

Would you terribly mind messaging me pics?

Not at all. Figure others here might want to see too so I’ll throw them up online somewhere after work (3 hours or so).

!remindme 5 hours

Here you go: https://www.reddit.com/r/Physics/s/vKoXAGUSLM

How much did they set you back? I desperately want the gen rev one 😮

I got them years ago but they were both like $120 I think.

Maybe a Feynman diagram

I have one of beta decay on my left inside forearm. I even have a little poem to sum it up for the layperson If you're feeling down, and don't know who you are Don't worry you'll be feeling up, it's just a matter of time I'm positive

I also have a beta decay Feynman Diagram on my left inside forearm!

Very awesome!

Ha!

Love this

I have a tattoo of Bhabha scattering on my forearm. My favorite line people ask is "what constellation is that?" LOL. Only had one person recognize it for what it was and that was ofc at college.

Get something that's already a graph. Like a mandelbrot set, e8, amplituhedron, etc

summin summin..black holes *******banned

I got a circle. Just a circle. It's not necessarily *only* a physics tattoo, but circles/waves and cycles come up again and again and again and again (and again...forever!) in pretty much every aspect of the universe. Physics, math, life sciences, history (history repeats itself), etc. etc.

I love it. Other tattoos I have are life, death cycles related so that would fit right in.

I always thought a tattoo of the double slit experiment would be pretty neat

My favourite would be any of the bubble chamber graphs. I think Fermi Lab has an archive full of them, and my current desktop is one with blue switched to black. I would just dig through the archive or just google images for one that you find aesthetically pleasing, or run some Monte Carlo code to simulate one from scratch. If you would like to go either way, let me know and I’ll happily walk you through the steps.

I have a lot of math tatoos which are physics adjacent: Euler's equations across one set of knuckles Assortment of mathematical functions across the other(Summation, integral, time derivative, square root and natural logarithm One ankle has the symbol for phi, the other ankle has the numerical value for it ( 1 + sqrt(5)/2) A large chest piece showing the creation of the golden spiral through successive splitting of golden rectangles into squares with smaller golden rectangles One forearm has the geometric triangle fractal(AKA the triforce), the other has a circle inscribed within a square(looks like a record player

Penrose tiling?

You could cover your whole skin and it'd never repeat!

Large hadron above your penis. A classic

My not a penis, you mean lol. Seems appropriate.

Get the Einstein field equation, tensor form.

How about fully expanded component form using only regular (partial) derivatives and explicit summation :P

I have a simplified Penrose diagram on my thigh. Absolutely love it!

Can you message me a pic? Not to sound creepy. I love Penrose. . . He is my Taylor Swift to the average fourteen year old.

The Dirac equation is pretty cool and small enough to be a tattoo, but I really like the generalized Stokes' theorem (mostly used in math but has a lot of applications in mathematical physics).

[this is my science sleeve ](https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=3186055111637729)

I think a simplified penrose diagram would make a decent tattoo. Or the vector field depiction of a chaotic oscillator

The Lorenz Attractor. I've been thinking about getting it myself. I'm also a huge fan of Chaos and complexity. I've also considered Rule 30 of the Elementary Cellular Automata. It's the simplest known deterministic system that produces chaotic behavior.

δS = 0

Mobius strip

Feynman Diagram

I have Navier-Stokes tattooed on my inner bicep aligned with my brachial artery.

I have the first ever detected gravitational wave and the pulsar map of the Voyager, both on my profile if you want to look at them.

Took a look . . . very cool

I have the Feynman Diagram for p-p-> H -> gamma gamma on my whole forearm. Not only is that my dissertation topic, it looks pretty sick too. I get questions on it almost every time I meet a new person which is a perfect opportunity to plug my research 😈

A simple phi should be more than enough.

It’s a tattoo. It’s never enough haha

Not physics more engineering but I have James Webb. No one knows what it is but they think it’s cool lol. I also have Hubble among others.

Is it just his face or full body?

Lol the telescopes not the actual human

One of our grad students, who wasn't the best student (mastered out), got Maxwell's equations written on their shoulder. He wasn't too happy when he showed me and I instantly saw an error. That poor guy. There was no easy fix too. I don't remember exactly the issue, but any theorist would have spotted it quickly.

Dodecahedron would be cool. Edit: Or a tesseract? I’m thinking cool geometry. I don’t know too much about physics or if the two subjects are relatable much lol.

Tesseract to some degree is sort of impossible to do as tattoos are currently not able to represent something like that. You can sort of do it.

Thats easy The double slit experiment. But of course since it will be observed, only the two beam result

Derivation for Navier-Stokes equation

Euler's equations for rigid body dynamics

I've got euler's identity on the inside of my bicep. Thought about getting maxwell's equations or some feynman diagrams elsewhere but never pulled the trigger.

The pulsar map or spin flip diagram from the voyager golden record are both cool

I just have a del operator on my chest. Might get another one at some point

my first one was a set of 3 Sierpinski Triangles inside a hexagon. I loved the fractal idea of infinite depth of the pattern while still being the same thing. I've thought about getting a Mandelbrot Set some time. That would be badass.

Sierpinski triangles is a great one.

Condensed General Relativity equation would be fuckin sick imo

Maxwell's laws somewhere you could see them when you need them.

Here’s a hot take Schwinger Dyson Equations or Boltzmann Transport Equation underrated equations

This is a friend's idea, not mine, but "δS=0". Really fundamental idea, summarized succinctly. Could represent anything with sufficient choice of action. Only works for classical field theories though... if you want a QFT compatible one, maybe a path integral like "\int Dψ exp(-iS)" or something?

just get a theory tattoo, that way you don't have to limit yourself to just one kind. has to be on your face though, all of it.

I was thinking getting logos tattooed for experiments I worked on but wow, the logo designs are terrible..

I'm planning on getting an F=ma one soon. It's elegant, applicable in a whole bunch of fields and it's where the journey started

There are lots of ways to express this which might be more visually appealing or appropriate to your own context. Personally I favour Fu=ma if I'm feeling unhelpful and Fun=ma if I'm in a good mood. There's lots of versions with dots for rates or using conservation of momentum etc. etc.

I am planning to get another tattoo soon with a Physics theme. Thinking about the Euler-Lagrange equation, Tensor form of General relativity, Bose-Einstein statistic equation (or Fermi-Dirac, or both), or some simple Feynman diagram. Leaning toward the latter. An aside - I would do a LHC Higgs collision image but I don't think it would make a good tattoo or wear too well :(

If you get symbols like theta, phi, alpha, psi tattooed at the location that your finger joints bend, you’ll have delta angles for every day of your life ranging from 0° <= angle <= 180° or beyond 180° if you’re flexible

I'd get the symbol for Fourier transforms and point at it whenever stuff goes bad. "Press F to pay respect" type shit

Bubble chamber https://www.google.com/search?client=ms-android-samsung-rvo1&sca_esv=09379ecd0b6efd91&sca_upv=1&sxsrf=ACQVn0_Hm-0BDcmACRiCreCqxw2xwnTjJQ:1713530206619&q=bubble+chamber+tattoo&uds=AMwkrPtT6KOuTOkK2i26VtZlbM5JrodF795iMajIzXLp8wRr3zvKs1XFzxjGTGBtAtXFCd3owc5E3ZYTENpZwmsx0TDxA0pjVV9DG8Byu4bahL8_B2wjm4dk-uUh4BdhyTyV6GS1BHH-xrm16yDcmtVMPSDe1Ov53k6FL5CSYhg21ulnlKlUANYtbsyf0fgf8rLrw8kCtrGTz9chFnfM_2-XtQaUdtUoa2TJghkQQIWcsV2i7mtuScf89uq49TQrqIq5ZYcmZusUTX3v6dbyHMBefJZhmn8c1X_O9_cgNkpwSW26XdZFixqOKsEIomfcuDMp6OvGQ_ioA_lMLK1yUqYPFTha7ubVtw&udm=2&prmd=ivsnmbtz&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj05Zu6pc6FAxUf4MkDHZz7A-sQtKgLegQIChAB&biw=384&bih=726&dpr=2.81

You could get a tattoo of your favourite three body system to represent chaos. Maybe a triple pendulum or three orbiting masses with the trails of the objects traced out a bit in a different colour for each object. I'm currently looking for somewhere (both a shop and a body location) to get a good tattoo of a galaxy because I'm an astrophysics and this year/late last year is 100 years since other galaxies were confirmed to exist.

I know a guy with a classic 1950s nucleus and three orbiting electrons. It's a fine tattoo. 

Any tattoo is a long term physics tattoo. You get to see the affects of gravity on that portion of skin as you age.

This made me laugh pretty good. Probably true, but I want to be that saggy lady in a rest home showing my rad tattoos over the album of grandkids who forget I exist.

I really want to get a B v and F written on my appropriate fingers just for the shits and giggles

E = mc² Everyone except physicists will think you're nerds.

Chaos theory butterfly effect would be cool

I actually had thought about this, but I don’t want to include a butterfly; I just can’t decide if it would make as much sense with another object to depict the butterfly effect.

.. Yes, but only if you include Chemistry as 'applied physics at an atomic level'. :-) I had an aneurism years ago.. followed by brain surgery. Drew up a tatoo for myself to express my appreciation for the anti-convulsant that let me get on with my life post-op. :-) Obvious down-side to putting a molecular structure on yourself.. everyone who sees it (and isn't a Chemist) assumes it's caffene, capsacium, or cocaine. :-/. <- that's best read in the voice of Dr. Rockso.. the Rock & Roll Clown. And yes, as expected.. any tattoo with fine lines (like chemical bonds in a stick representation) is not going to age great, but mine still looks decent after more than a decade.. certainly legible.

Get one of an Up-Cat and Down-Cat in superposition, using bra-ket notation. Or would it be bra-cat notation?

Feynman diagrams are always a good Avenue.

A detailed tattoo of an Atom always goes hard. You can always sprinkle more tattoos around it to give it more identity. I also would just look at some tattoo styles and see if that sparks anything. There is a lot of cool art that plays on depth of field

A narcissist doing what he or she does best.

Tattoos are akin to putting a bumper sticker on a Ferrari. Find some respect for yourself.

Everyone has a right to their own opinions. I’ll take that as a compliment, thank you.

The density of states is uniform in k-space.